


Geborgenheit

by medeadea



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 02:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9215588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medeadea/pseuds/medeadea
Summary: (a feeling of safety, protection and concealment, most often felt in connection with one or more other persons or a special place.)A routine in togetherness, as told by Kozume Kenma.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eicinic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eicinic/gifts).



> This started out very long ago as a birthday present for Gin and then I took... a long time between each part.  
> Eternal thanks go to Marge and Hannah for beta reading! I'm so glad I was able to finish this with your help!

Kuro’s hair is soft, somehow wispy. It doesn’t look it, actually, but it feels like a child’s when you touch it.

Kenma hadn’t learned this until two weeks ago. He had always assumed—like everyone does—that Kuro’s hair is strawy and thick, stubbornly sticking up in every direction, but it’s actually because it is so thin and light that it can stick up so well.

And now Kuro lies there, in _Kenma’s_ lap, and lets his pitch black ( _soft_ ) tangles be brushed through by Kenma’s fingers while he hums that awful catchy tune that was on the radio earlier when they were in the kitchen.

 

How had they gotten here in the first place?

It’s not _exactly_ clear to Kenma and that kind of weirds him out. Usually he knows what he’s doing when Kuro is concerned, but something had changed two weeks ago.

It seems like Kuro had made a decision on that bizarre Sunday afternoon, or he had had an epiphany of some sort. In any case, his demeanour had changed. Noticeably, but apparently only to Kenma. Nobody else recognizes the change and that’s clearly just because he behaves differently solely around Kenma.

Even Kai hasn’t realized anything and Kenma likes to use him as a gauge for reactions on the volleyball team, because he is pretty observant and _does_ speak up when something is worrisome.

And a Kuro that suddenly needs more physical contact as if he were lonely is _very_ worrisome.

 

Kenma cannot find a reason for it, he doesn’t understand what could have caused it. Kuro’s parents are fine, they’re very happy together, just having celebrated their five year wedding anniversary three weeks ago. The volleyball team is in a good condition, maybe this one tactic they are trying to master is taking them too long, but it isn’t really anything to lose sleep over. They are still a frightening team and there are no competitions coming up for the next months. And Kenma himself—he hadn’t changed at all. Not in the last few months, he is okay, his family is okay, too.

He doesn’t understand why Kuro acts differently around him now.

Kenma strokes Kuro’s hair one last time, downwards, so maybe it doesn’t have to stick up so much when he gets back up.

“Kuro,” he says, “are you lonely?”

Kuro slowly turns his head so he can look up in Kenma’s face and he has his eyebrows drawn up and his eyes are big.

“No. Why?” he asks, tone quiet and a bit incredulous. Confusion is written all over his face.

Kenma believes him. While Kuro is good at deceiving with his smile, he’s bad without it, and there is no grin to be found on his face right now. Kenma draws his brows together.

“No reason.”

Still, he tugs a little at Kuro’s hair. But Kuro just chuckles and snuggles his head back down, closer to Kenma’s thighs. Kenma can feel Kuro’s breaths near his knees, permeating his thin sweatpants and making his skin slightly clammy.

So it was something else then.

Maybe he had to look at it from a broader perspective? It could be less recent, a matter from a while ago. Or it could be the opposite, a matter of what was to come. Did Kuro worry about the future? He never had before, Kenma knew.

He sighed. Why wouldn’t Kuro tell him?

 

* * *

 

Kuro doesn’t worry about the future and Kenma is getting frustrated.

It’s been five weeks now and Kuro is still like this, always clinging to Kenma, invading his space.

Kuro has never done this before. Okay, not true, he had at the beginning of their friendship, before he knew about Kenma and his limits. He had pushed Kenma, prodded him, _touched_ him like everyone else had. But unlike them, when Kenma had frozen under the attention and contact, Kuro hadn’t continued or completely lost interest after two days. No, he’d found the minimum distance to stay that didn’t upset Kenma but was still _close_.

Nothing of that distance is left now.

Somehow Kuro and Kenma end up constantly touching, moving around each other, breathing the same air.

And for some reason Kenma doesn’t do anything about it. He just lets it happen, lets Kuro lay his head on his shoulder or in his lap, stroking Kuro’s hair as Kuro hums in contentment. He lets Kuro guide him with a hand on his back and bump his knees under the table when Kuro visits him on lunch break. And when Kuro lays his arm over his shoulders while they’re watching a movie, he can do nothing but nestle his head up to Kuro’s shoulder and grip the edge of Kuro’s sweater a little tighter.

Nothing like that has ever happened before.

 

Right now they are both sitting at the canal watching the sun set, too lazy for the long walk home after practice yet. It’s a normal thing, common, has happened plenty of times before. In fact, this isn’t even Kenma’s favourite spot for this kind of thing; there is a much better one further up the way. But Kuro just felt like sitting down here today and Kenma doesn’t really mind that much. For some reason, he doesn’t even feel like taking out his console to continue his game and opts instead to sit beside Kuro and watch the water flow by.

It should be completely normal. It isn’t.

Usually Kuro keeps an approximate distance of ten centimetres between them, no matter where they are sitting. Less when it is unavoidable, of course, though Kenma isn’t completely averse to touch. But now, Kuro’s leaning close, his weight braced on a hand a millimetre away from Kenma’s thigh. It’s a relaxed posture, a normal posture, just closer than before.

This is what’s going on all the time now. Usually people touch their friends less at their age, shifting into adulthood, away from the constant contact of children.

Kuro does the opposite, and abruptly at that.

Kenma goes over his theories again.

Kuro isn’t lonely, he said so himself and there is no reason for him to be. He isn’t unhappy; in fact, he seems to be more upbeat and his good moods last longer. The team is in good shape; they have mastered that move that took them so long to learn and Kuro’s teachers are relaxed right now—schoolwork is anything but stressful. And Kuro told him just yesterday which universities he was planning to apply to and that chances are good that he’ll be accepted to his favourite one.

It doesn’t make sense. Everything is the same, except for the touches exchanged between them.

Kenma’s thoughts start running in circles, leaving him with nothing but confusion and a headache. He doesn’t want to ask Kuro again and he also doesn’t even _have_ anything to ask.

The only thing he _really_ wants to ask is why he himself doesn’t do anything about it. And _that_ he can’t hear from Kuro. He can ask nobody but himself and he thinks the answer has been dawning on him for quite some time now.

Kenma just doesn’t want to acknowledge that he indulges himself.

Indulging himself comes with too much emotion, too much shaking, just _too much_.

He cannot handle this yet, this excessive _everything_ , and he doesn’t _want_ to.

Even so, with all his wants and ruminations, there is no avoiding that Kuro’s touches, as small, insignificant and unnoticed by everyone else as they may be, are undoubtedly _intimate_.

And that makes Kenma’s heart flutter.

 

* * *

 

Kenma is drowsy, almost asleep, his whole body feels heavy and immovable and his weighty head is pillowed comfortably on the backrest of the couch. The TV flickers blue light into the room but it’s just showing the DVD menu. There’s no sound to accompany the weird atmosphere created by the last sunrays creeping through the window behind him that clashes with the artificial light of the screen.

On his lap rests—like so often now—Kuro’s head. He’s definitely asleep; Kenma can hear his heavy breaths and feels his shoulder moving where it presses on his thigh.

Kenma has always been aware of Kuro, more so than of anyone else, but this is new. This constant attention his mind pays to Kuro, even when he’s half asleep and his thoughts slow like they are wading through molasses he _knows_.

It’s not a bad feeling, more something that has been coming for a long time, sure and steady, and only through Kuro’s now constant touches Kenma was made conscious of it.

Kuro moves suddenly, curls his hand in front of his face and pushes his head back into Kenma’s belly and _that’s_ the moment Kenma realizes the predicament he's in. He is _hard_ , the back of Kuro’s head pressed exactly where it shouldn’t be, and now Kenma panics. He doesn’t know if he just flinched or not, but he needs to move out from under Kuro and flee before Kuro wakes up. Kenma really doesn’t want to deal with that mortification.

“Kenma?”

Kuro’s voice is raspy and tired and Kenma feels like he is dying. His fingers cramp in loose fists, but he can’t move and he can’t bring himself to utter more than a throaty gurgle that sounds like he’s being strangled. He kind of wants to be strangled; his heart beats so fast and fills his head with blood. Maybe it will explode, that would be good.

Kuro turns onto his back so he can look in Kenma’s glaring red face and to his credit his eyes stray nowhere but to Kenma’s own eyes. Eye contact however isn’t something Kenma’s absolutely keen on at this moment and he brings his fists up and presses them over his eyes.

“Kenma,” Kuro repeats, and his voice now is soft, more awake.

“Please let me go,” Kenma manages to press out between his clenched teeth and as soon as Kuro sits up enough to let him slip out he’s gone, bedroom door banged shut behind him.

While he slides down along the door Kenma contemplates if he ever embarrassed himself this much in front of Kuro. He can’t remember. He doesn’t really get embarrassed with just Kuro around anymore. Well, didn’t. What a disaster.

But because Kuro is Kuro, and also Kenma’s best friend, he follows Kenma and knocks at his door. Kuro doesn’t try to open it, what Kenma is thankful for, instead he bumps his head against the wood and keeps knocking a light rhythm with his knuckles. It’s a rhythm they thought of when they were little, probably influenced by advertising jingles, but still very much a creation between the two of them.

After a while Kuro stops and Kenma almost suspects he went away, but then Kuro speaks.

“Kenma? Are you done being embarrassed?”

Obviously Kenma isn’t, so he keeps quiet and tries to concentrate on disgusting or even more embarrassing things. Probability calculus. His math teacher’s bald spot, that time when Aerith—

“C’mon Kenma, this stuff happens all the time. Plus it’s just me.”

Somehow, illogically, the fact that it’s Kuro makes it worse and that confuses Kenma. The situation isn’t improved by the fact that Kenma can hear that same confusion in Kuro’s voice. It makes him feel almost as guilty as the fact that he is apparently unable to think of anything disgusting or mortifying but instead keeps coming back to the drowsy contentment of feeling Kuro’s shoulder pressing against his thigh, Kuro’s warm breath sweeping over his knee.

The feeling doesn’t _turn him on_ or anything ridiculous like that, but at the same time that knowledge of security doesn’t make his damn boner go away any faster either.

“Can we just play a little on your Xbox? I don’t wanna go home yet.”

Kuro’s voice wafts through the door and Kenma relents. He doesn’t really want Kuro to go after all this, either. So he gets up, pulls a bit at his sweatpants until he’s content with their appearance, opens the door just a little so Kuro knows that he can come in, and shuffles over to the Xbox.

Kuro steps inside very casually, closes the door behind himself and flops down on Kenma’s bed. Kenma throws him a controller and starts up Divinity.

He tries not to look at Kuro but fails.

For his part Kuro acts completely normal, grins at Kenma’s choice of game and makes himself comfortable.

Playing together with Kuro feels like always, they talk strategy and are silent beyond that. After some time Kenma forgets about his embarrassment and nestles slightly closer to Kuro, relaxing.

Nothing changes if it doesn’t have to, and Kenma is glad.

 

* * *

 

In class they talked about last year, this day exactly a year ago, because they wrote a letter then, to themselves a year older.

Kenma hadn’t understood the purpose of the letter at the time and he doesn’t understand it now that he holds it in his hands again either. It was just a dumb exercise and a waste of time if you ask him. Today or a year ago.

Now he has to write an essay on it, as homework. Reflect on the changes that have happened in the last year and whether he predicted them or if he had any big surprises happen to him.

Kenma reads the letter for the third time in ten minutes and puts it down again. He has no clue what to say. Predictably it consists of his younger self complaining about too hot weather, too much homework, too much and too hard volleyball practice and also that one video game that he still regrets spending money on. He refuses to even think of the name.

All of this is stuff he would write again if he was forced to do this stupid task today, but no, he has to reflect.

Kuro had once called him the most inert human being in all of existence and Kenma can’t really disagree. He doesn’t like it when things change because most of the time they become worse or at least more complicated and that’s a hassle to deal with. He’s probably just lazy so he keeps stuff the way it is.

“What’s up? Having trouble?” Kuro asks from his corner of the desk.

He’s trying to study Japanese history, Kenma knows. Most of the time when Kuro comes over for school work Kenma watches him study instead of doing his own homework. It’s strangely relaxing. And like this he already knows what he’ll have to do next year and where he can cheat his way around, which is nice. His own homework suffers a little though.

“Eh,” Kenma mumbles and pulls a face.

Kuro snorts at him and shakes his head. “Just get it over with so you’re done.”

Then—Kenma sees it coming before it even starts—Kuro lifts his hand to ruffle through Kenma’s hair and singsongs, “Mooore gaming time~”

And while Kenma does appreciate more time spent in front of his TV instead of his homework, he does _not_ appreciate his sweaty hair being touched or even ruffled right now, so he snatches Kuro’s hand in front of his face and pins it down on the desk with his left.

Kuro pouts but after a second of being ignored he gets the message and goes back to his history textbook.

Kenma picks his pen back up and tries to bullshit his way through his assignment as fast as possible.

The way Kuro’s hand twitches under his own sometimes is a bit distracting but it helps him get back on track when he’s drifting off, too.

It really is a useless exercise to do, especially as he isn’t nearly dumb enough to write down the one thing that has changed since last year, that is important. That’s nobody’s business but his.

And Kuro’s.

So he writes about hot weather, about homework that’s the same as always but harder, about volleyball and his role as a regular and his underclassmen that are almost too exhausting to bear. Even a sentence about the worst video game ever makes it into his essay.

When he’s done he throws his pen in the corner and props his chin on his hand. With his left he traces the veins on Kuro’s hand and feels the sinews and bones under the skin. Kuro’s hand is warm and big, quite a bit bigger than Kenma’s and he has such long fingers. If fingers could be called pretty, that’s what Kuro’s should be described as.

Kenma knows _very well_ that what he’s doing right now wouldn’t have been possible a year ago. He didn’t touch anyone then like this, not even Kuro. And yet, he doesn’t mind it now.

He’s stopped panicking about the fluttering in his stomach because none of the drama he thought it would bring ever happened. It’s just him and Kuro and that’s it.

Yes, maybe Kuro is Kenma’s polar opposite in things of inertia, always up to something, moving forward, challenging the world to come at him, but they’re also a lot alike on a personal level. Kenma needs to know what others think, especially of himself, and so does Kuro. And they like to have it simple, clear.

Between them that’s easy, because they agree, intimacy or not. Whatever would come of all this—strong feelings, insecurity, who knows—Kenma and Kuro would tackle it together.

That’s comforting to know, so Kenma goes with it and waits to see where he’ll end up.

 

* * *

 

The sun has been a lot more forgiving these days. Whenever they go outside it’s rather warm than hot, so Kenma is content. It would be fine to do his homework in Kuro’s garden if Kuro hadn’t finished much earlier and was now playing around with a volleyball, occasionally almost hitting him with stray serves.

Whatever, he can always do it tomorrow morning on the train.

Kenma shucks his books away and stretches out on the floor. Immediately Kuro comes over, having detected his capitulation. He sits down with his legs crossed and starts tugging at Kenma’s T-shirt.

“I’m not setting for you, leave me alone.”

Kuro sighs but retracts his hands. He lays down next to Kenma, on the wooden planks of the patio.

Their view above isn’t very spectacular. The sun shines and the sky is blue, empty. It’s better than at night, Kenma guesses, when the sky is grey-ish from the lights of the city, but still. Usually there are clouds that people interpret into shapes or meanings or whatever, but Kuro’s and his sky is blank.

It’s not like Kenma minds, and Kuro doesn’t either, judging from his motionlessness. They’re quiet. Basking in the autumn sun and in each other’s presence.

Kenma thinks about them, how he was so confused about Kuro mere months ago. How Kuro knew him better than he knew himself and just decided that he could change them without really changing anything that wasn’t in motion already. How Kenma was so scared of Kuro’s touches because he’d forgotten who it was that was drawing closer to him. How they are so fundamentally different but still cling together.

He doesn’t ask why. He knows.

“Hey Kuro,” he starts, but doesn’t know how to continue. It’s rare that he begins speaking without knowing where he’ll go. That’s more Kuro’s territory.

Kuro hums, closes his eyes.

“This is all I have,” Kenma continues and means everything. Playing volleyball with Kuro, walking home with him, doing homework with him, just being around. All that he can do for Kuro, all he does.

Kuro grabs his hand and laces their fingers together, glances over.

“Hey Kuro,” Kenma says again, “do you love me?”

“I do.”

Kuro squeezes his hand, but it isn’t necessary, it’s not like that’s news for him. Probably.

“I love you, too.”

Kuro laughs and turns his head to Kenma.

“Thank you.”

His smile is blinding. He’s happy.

On the next bit Kenma stutters a little. Just because he isn’t afraid doesn’t mean that he knows what he’s doing, so he takes some time to fumble for his words. Eventually he gets it right.

“Kuro, let’s kiss.”

Kuro laughs again.

“So in the end you’re that calm, huh?”

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on tumblr or twitter
> 
> If you can tell me the episode that last part is a hommage to you'll get something from me :D


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